Which Roof Would You Choose?

Picture your dream home… If money was not a factor, which roofing material would you select?
Metal, Tile, or Shingle.

Recently, we did a random survey of 500 Florida residents with this very question. Do these results surprise you?

What Women (and Men) Want…

Overall, Tile was the winner at 44.8%. Metal was a close second at 33.2%, and shingle came in at 20.4%.

Digging a little deeper, we ranked the answers by gender, annual income, and whether they lived in rural, urban or suburban areas.

The first thing we noticed is that men and women want different things. (Big Surprise!)

Women, ages 55 to 64 preferred metal roofs, 45.8% of the time. While Men of the same age only chose a metal roof, 34.7% of the time. The favorite choice among men of this age group was tile, coming in at 53.1%.

If we look even closer, we find that women in the $25K-49K income range, in rural areas,  and 55-64 age range, chose a metal roof 50% of the time, while men in the same area chose metal roofs a whopping 100% of the time. Maybe there is hope for the battle of the sexes after all!

Among the urbanites, women in the 45-54 age range with a salary of $100-149K decided they wanted a metal roof 100% of the time. Men in the same ranges chose tile 100% of the time. The battle is alive and well!

And out in the suburbs, women, age 55-64, with an income range of $50-74K opted for the metal roof 70% of the time while their male counterparts were split evenly among the three choices at 33.3%.

It seems men and women just can’t agree. Ah well, that’s not really why we were asking this question.

What Do These Numbers Mean?

We posed this question for three reasons:

1. We wanted to take the pulse of our home states purchasing preferences
2. We wanted to see if we could define a target market for our product
3. 500 answers tells us a lot

What does this mean for metal roofing contractors?

We’ve found your target market: Women in suburban and rural areas, age 45-64 in the mid income ranges $50-149K are your sweet spot. We’re not saying that you should change all your advertisements to a pink color, but at least now you have some hard data to make informed decisions.
~J.C.